RELIGIOUS EVIL? A RESPONSE TO HITCHENS’ VIEW ON HINDUISM Chandana Deka and V. Prabhu Abstract: The new atheists have been quite critical about religion. Their criticisms do not just confine to religious doctrines, and unavailability of reason in religion, they also extend their criticisms against all aspects of religion. The criticisms include doctrinal and speculative components about religion (Dawkins 2006, Dennett 2006) and also the ill-effects of social and cultural practices that emerge out of religion. In this article, we focus on the New Atheists criticism of Hinduism. The new atheist remarks that Hinduism as a religion has specific social and cultural practices that go against the value of modern values of gender equality and human rights (Hitchens 2007). Notably, Hitchens claims that Hinduism as a religion has practices like Suttee (Sati). We contend in this article that Hitchens' criticisms against Hindu practices like Suttee (Sati) confine to a very few sets of people, and it may not be the mainstream understanding of Hinduism We bolster our position from the following arguments. 1. This practice was never sanctioned in the Hindu Scriptures. 2. It is more a social evil than a religious one; hence, religion cannot be blamed for this practice. 3. This social practice was in less number, but the number has been increased for vested interests. 4. Moreover, thinkers and social reformers were trying from their side to reduce and reject this evil practice, and 5. This practice alone cannot be taken as a claim that religion is bad. In this article, we focus on the challenges set forth by a group of thinkers called collectively as the new atheist group. While the issues of misunderstanding and conflicting ideologies are primarily focused on one culture as against other culture, in this paper, we focus on the conflicting ideologies and misunderstanding of non- religious atheists' position concerning religious practices. Richard Dawkins (2006), Dennett (2006), Sam Harris (2004), Hitchens (2007) are some of the recent defenders of atheism. Their group is known as the new atheist group. All of them talk about the absence of reason in religion. Among all those atheists Hitchens' challenges to religion are notable. He describes how religion is a manmade wish, a cause of dangerous sexual repression, and a lie of our origins in the universe. Miss CHANDANA DEKA, Research Scholar, the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati. Email: [email protected]. Dr. V. PRABHU, Associate Professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati. Email: [email protected] Journal of East-West Thought 50 CHANDANA DEKA & V. PRABHU Now we focus on the challenges set forth by Hitchens. Hitchens realizes that religion lacks justifications and offers no explanation of anything important. Hitchens, in his book, 'God is Not Great: How religion poisons everything' criticizes religion. He describes the ways in which religion is a manmade wish, a cause of dangerous sexual repression, and a lie of our origins in the universe. Hitchens wants to frame the argument for a more secular life based on science and reason. Hitchens realizes that religion lacks justifications and offers no explanation of anything important. The positions shared by Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens constitute the background theoretical framework that is known as the New Atheism. Along with Christianity, Hitchens has come up with his adverse opinion on other religions like Islam and Hinduism, particularly posing ethical challenges to religion (Hitchens 2007). While criticizing Hinduism, he mentions the existence of Hindu murderers and sadists and a form of Hindu suttee (Sati System) that recommends "suicide" of widows. (Walker 2007). Through these instances of religious practices, Hitchens claims that religion as such is wrong, unwanted and troublesome (Hitchens 2007). We argue against Hitchens’ position on two issues. One is that regarding his opinion on certain Hindu practices and the other is his understanding of religion as unethical and subsequently to reject religion. There is a general tendency among the new atheists to discard whatever ideas or thoughts that come out of religion. They think that religion as such is bad, unwanted as it is not rational and highly dogmatic. This attitude has made them discard the entire episode of religion. Hitchens specifically talk about the social and cultural aspects of the effects of religion to claim that they are not only amoral but even immoral. In the book, he states that there are numerous ways in which religion is not just amoral but positively immoral. And these faults and crimes are not to be found in the behavior of its adherents but its original precepts. These include- presenting a false picture of the world to the innocent and the credulous, the doctrine of blood sacrifice, the doctrine of atonement, the doctrine of eternal reward and/or punishment, the imposition of impossible tasks and rules (Hitchens 2007: 71). Among the new atheists, there are inconsistencies, sweeping generalizations, in their understanding on issues related to religion. For instance, they talk about religion as dogmatic and irrational, but this may not be attributed to all religions even among the new atheist group. For instance, Hitchens writes about the existence of Hindu and Buddhist murderers and sadists, how Buddhist and Shinto priests trained the suicide bombers. (Walker 2007) But Hitchens’ fellow atheist Harris speaks quite favorably about Buddhism (relative to other religions), for example, in Killing the Buddha (Samharris.org), he writes: “One could surely argue that the Buddhist tradition, taken as a whole, represents the richest source of contemplative wisdom that any civilization has produced. In a world that has long been terrorized by fratricidal Sky- God religions, the ascendance of Buddhism would surely be a welcome development.” Hitchens (2007) took an almost sociological exploration of religion. Unlike Dawkins, who grounds his work in scientifically informed theory, Hitchens explored the behavioral and theological implications of religion in more detail, focusing on the results of the social movement of religion and the scriptural passages Journal of East-West Thought RELIGIOUS EVIL? 51 that inform social order and belief. More specifically, Hitchens’ interest focused on behavior and ideology (Silver, Coleman and Hood 2014) Hitchens seeks to criticize various social changes that occurred due to religion. For example, he critically explores the Koran, particularly its claim that the Archangel Gabriel dictated the written word to Muhammad (Silver 2013). Silver writes, Hitchens states that the Koran was likely pieced together from Jewish and Christian traditional writings and theology. He provides evidence of this, saying that those who are versed in the traditions would recognize the commonalities between the Abrahamic religions, inferring that the Koran was produced not of divine dictation. Hitchens also explored the rise and fall of denominations within religion, focusing on religious groups such as Millerism (an apocalyptic tradition of the 1800s) and Sabbatai Sevi, a 17th-century Messianic personality within Judaism. Both cases were organized by charismatic figures (Silver 2013) Hitchens insists that social emphasis should be removed from religion and focused on more productive social agendas. For Hitchens, just like Dawkins, Atheism plays a role in helping form a better society. In similar lines, Hitchens talks about practices of the Hindu religion as well. We focus on his remarks on Hindu religious practices and extend our argument to other religions as well. Hitchens basic premise is that there are religious practices which are harmful to society, and because religious followers are dogmatists, one has to discard religion to get rid of these practices. In one of the chapters of his book God Is Not Great, he talks about the existence of a form of Hindu suttee that recommends "suicide" of widows. And he also states that it was put down to some extent by the British in India for imperial as much as for Christian reasons (Hitchens 2007: 72). Response to Hitchens on Hinduism: Religious evil and social evil Misconceptions on the prevalence of Sati Religious believers views on religious evil, e.g. Gandhi Contribution of social reformers There are a few problems with Hitchens' conception of religion, religious practices, rites, and rituals. Basically, Hitchens' argument is to show how religion hampers human growth. In the case of Hitchens’ comment on Hinduism, we refute his position based on the following few points. The first point is that we do not think that the crux of Hinduism in particular and religion, in general, is to bring forth the social evils and sustain it in society. Some of the religious practices do have regressive practices when looked up from secular and human rights perspective, but it does not mean that all such practices are regressive practices. We agree that practices like animal sacrifice, not allowing women to enter into a religious temple, denial of inter-religious marriages can be counted as regressive practices and we strictly condemn those practices, but at the same time, there are practices like temples, religious institutes feeding the hungry and poor people. So, we do not subscribe to the view that religion as such is wrong and religious practices in its entirety are regressive practices. One should be blind and dogmatic not to see any positive effects of following a religion. Journal of East-West Thought 52 CHANDANA DEKA & V. PRABHU The second point of contention concerns Hitchens' remarks on Hindu practice called Sati. Hitchens writes, “Hindu child brides in India are flogged, and sometimes burned alive, if the pathetic dowry they bring is judged to be too small” (Hitchens 2007: 51). Hitchens claims it to be a religious evil; it may be true but not wholly true. It is more of a social evil than a religious evil.